The broad concept of two-piece attachments involving a ball and a socket type is not new. The closest prior art is represented by the Johnson Pat. No. 3,389,883. In this patent the socket portion is rigidly and permanently attached to a wall by screws or other means, and the hemispherical socket is provided with a deep curving slot. The ball portion is provided with a narrow neck which extends down into the slot and is rigidly attached or forms a part of a dispenser, such as a dispenser for paper or plastic cups. It is essential that the dispenser be held strongly and vertically and parallel to the wall or other attaching surface. In order to make this possible, the neck connecting the ball and the ball surface contacts with fingers, which are formed of the socket itself and which hold the two elements rigidly and strongly in parallel relation but spaced from the wall. The fingers also contact surfaces on the dispenser itself. Holding is by the slot and fingers and not by the socket itself.
Another proposal is found in the Staver Pat. No. 3,125,824, in which a rigid, double conical insert is molded into a cake of soap. The double cone has curved surfaces and can be held between two fingers when the soap is used. In one of the figures, FIG. 4, the double conical insert carries a ball which snaps into a socket on a bracket rigidly attached either to a washstand or a wall surface. The material being held, the soap, cannot swing against the surface and the socket does not have a portion which bears against the ball after it is slid in; the only holding is by the springiness of the ball and socket, which is quite weak, and while not inoperative with pieces of soap is completely unsuitable for other objects, which can be heavier and which should be able to swing against a supporting surface.